My Ongoing Rants on Marketing, Business and Management

Eric In The News

I’ve been fortunate over the years to have had a number of interesting experiences with the press, both for me personally and for the companies I was working for. You know me, always willing to spread the Lundbohm brand by getting my name in the press. Sometimes, I get interested or passionate on a certain topic and that ends up with me commenting on those topics.

The internet pretty much makes every interaction you have in the press a part of your permanent record. It’s all out there associated with your name and waiting to be found. Here are some of the more interesting of the things you can find me in.

The Recent

After I started working with Veracity Industrial Networks, I took an interest in the cyber risks to our nation’s infrastructure. The danger is considerable and as yet, untested. We haven’t had a “cyber 9/11” attack. So I did some research, read the top books on the topic and talked to security people in the power industry. I also met with a member of congress, Congressman Lou Correa, to get his take. I documented what I learned in a white paper titled “Understanding the Increasing Threat of Nation State Cyber-attacks” which was published originally by “Network Security,” an international cybersecurity journal. It’s been reprinted a couple more times since then,. You can view the paper or download a pdf of it here.

So my interest in the nation-state cyber threats we are facing has culminated with me being quoted in the cover story for the March 2018 SEC Magazine. The folks at SC Magazine have been very important to me at several companies and I have been to their offices in NYC and London. Teri Robinson quoted me in her story and included my picture in the article. Great exposure!

The last installment of this SC Magazine saga occurred at the 2018 RSA Security Conference. I caught up with one of my former PR folks and we happened to met at the SC Magazine booth. Sure enough, they were giving away the issue with my quote and picture on page 12! To quote the infamous Navin R. Johnson, “This is the kind of spontaneous publicity that makes people!”

It’s not often that I “Speak out” on an issue, but the Apple v. the U.S. Government controversy is one I felt very passionate about and actively shared my feelings. I was quoted in Information Week on this issue. Among other things, I am quoted as saying this is “the scariest news we’ve heard yet in this case.” Click here to see the whole article.

A writer from this magazine saw one of my blogs on how much I have learned about management from playing in a band, interviewed me and put this article together. I had a great picture taken of me in business dress playing one of my Les Pauls that is only in the print version. More info on that photo in the Gallery.

I was on Sales and Lead Management Radio with my friend Jim Obermayer. They do this great weekly radio show from their website http://www.salesleadmgmtassn.com/. I had a great time doing the shows and was actually the guest two weeks in a row. This is the first of the two sessions.

This European publication found one of my blog posts to be interesting and asked if they could extract for an article. They did just that and provided a link to this site, bringing a large number of International Trade Show professionals to my blog. I received many nice comments from those folks. Also, the blog actually included a picture from a trade show we did in the Silicon Valley some years ago. You can click here to link to the article.

The Funny

The Inquirer, a UK publication, covered a relaunch I did in the UK in this fascinating article. Not only am I described as “marketing, veep” but they also use the colorful term “flogging” in place of “selling” as in “flogging their boxes.” They also spoke of the “throbbing margins” we were going to provide with our new distributor. The Brits have their own way of describing things, making this a really interesting article. Click here to enjoy this classic.

The Ugly

While I personally subscribe to the old adage that “all press is good press” and can point to 100 examples of people and companies that have benefited from even negative press, I did have this one situation where I had some bad press it wasn’t so funny.

During the war in Iraq, our product (an internet content filter) was being used to block some web access for the only internet cafe available to the journalists there. One evening, I received an email from someone at ABC News and another from the Wall Street Journal. Both asked if I knew our product was in use in Baghdad. I looked into the situation (with some help from the journalists) and we determined the product was a licensed copy of our product, sold to a user in the United Arab Emirates through a reseller in Egypt. We determined it was a legal sale, not in violation of any US law and I reported that back to the journalists. This article started a backlash.

I actually received some ugly emails from this article, accusing me of being un-American, etc. Later, I came across this exchange on a blog during a search for my name. Interesting and a little bit scary. I have to say; this event was in no way “good PR.”